THE OVERSEAS Employment Programme has boosted the local economy with over $400 million in remittances, but absconding workers pose a threat to the survival of the scheme, Government officials are reporting.
According to senior director of Manpower Services at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Barrington Bailey, 211 Jamaicans have run off from the hotel programme in the United States so far this year. Another 98 have absconded from the Canadian farm work programme.
There are approximately 3,500 Jamaicans working in the hotel industry in the United States and the farming and hotel industries in Canada.
Mr. Bailey noted, too, that hotel workers in the United States have remitted over $271 million, while farm workers in the US and Canada have respectively remitted over $86 million and $63 million. The total for remittances between January and September this year is $421 million, providing both families and the economy with much-needed support.
Mr. Bailey said the number of Jamaicans who abscond during the contracted period "could create serious problems for the programme."
Despite the concerns over the number of workers "running off", the figures for the farm work scheme in Canada actually represent a decrease of 100, with only 11 disappearing from the farm programme in the United States, as opposed to 29 last year.
Recruitment for next year's programme will begin at the start of January as hundreds of workers are due home over the next few weeks.
Two years ago, the Labour Ministry expressed concern over what it said was the growing number of Jamaican workers absconding from the Farm and Factories Programme in Canada. It promised to take steps to arrest this trend.
The Ministry's 1999 statistical bulletin showed that during the previous year, a total of 164 persons went absent without leave (AWOL) from the programme. This was 36 more workers than the 128 who ran away the previous year. In 1995, 104 workers went AWOL. This increased to 108 in 1996 and jumped to 132 in 1997.
MINISTRY URGES SOUND CHOICES
The then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Anthony Irons, said although the Canadian authorities had not made heavy weather of the increase, the Ministry would be taking steps to ensure that the problem was checked.
"We are going to have to tell the Members of Parliament to be very careful when we are nominating persons," he said. Persons who are employed in the Overseas Employment Programme, which offers jobs on farms and factories in Canada and the United States, are usually nominated by parliamentarians. However, the Ministry has responsibility for making the final selections.
Among the measures which were employed by the Ministry four years ago to deal with the problem was to prevent residents of the Kingston and urban St. Andrew from participating in the programme.
These persons, Mr. Irons said, were more likely to abscond than those from rural areas. He said the programme was geared towards farmers, most of whom are from the rural communities.
